• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.1001-1007
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• 2023

Dose limits are not applied to medical radiation exposure therefore justification and optimization should be essential for protecting radiation. This study explores methods to reduce exposure dose undergoing general radiation exam by bolus(tissue equivalent material) with keeping image quality. Hand PA projection with 50 kVp, 5 mAs, SID 100 cm, and 8×10 inch is referred by covered bolus of thickness 0, 3, 5, 8, and 10 mm for evaluation entrance dose and SNR. The entrance dose (μGy) to the hand by bolus thickness was 125.41±0.288, 106.85±0.255, 104.97±0.221, 91.68±0.299, and 90.94±0.106 showing a significant reduction in radiation exposure depending on if the bolus was used and bolus thickness. The SNR of the image was 13.997, 13.906, 12.240, 12.538, and 12.548 at each bolus thickness, showing no significant difference. It was confirmed that if appropriate thickness and size of bolus is used depending on the type of radiological imaging exam and the body site, a significant radiation dose reduction effect can be achieved without deteriorating image quality.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.305-314
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• 2023

With the development of medical technology and radiation treatment equipment, the frequency of high-precision radiation therapy such as intensity modulation radiation therapy has increased. Image-guided radiation therapy has become essential for radiation therapy in precise and complex treatment plans. In particular, with the introduction of imaging equipment for diagnosis in a linear accelerator, CBCT scanning became possible, which made it possible to calibrate and correct the patient's posture through 3D images. Although more precise reproduction of the patient's posture has become possible, the exposure dose delivered to the patient during the image acquisition process cannot be ignored. Radiation optimization is necessary in the field of radiation therapy, and efforts to reduce exposure are necessary. However, when acquiring 3D CBCT images by changing the imaging conditions to reduce exposure, there should be no image quality or artefacts that would make it impossible to align the patient's position. In this study, Rando phantom was used to scan and evaluate images for each shooting condition. The highest SNR was obtained at 100 kV 80 mA 25 ms F1 filter 180°. As the tube voltage and tube current increased, the noise decreased, and the bowtie filter showed the optimal effect at high tube current. Based on the actual scanned images, it was confirmed that patient alignment was possible under all imaging conditions, and that image-guided radiation therapy for patient alignment was possible under the condition of 70 kV 10 mA 20 ms F0 filter 180°, which showed the lowest SNR. In this study, image evaluation was conducted according to the imaging conditions, and low tube voltage, tube current, and small rotation angle scan are expected to be effective in reducing radiation exposure. Based on this, the patient's exposure dose should be kept as low as possible during CBCT imaging.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.191-199
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• 2023

This study aimed to propose minimized radiation doses with an optimized abdomen x-ray image, which realizes a Deep Blind Image Super-Resolution Generative adversarial network (BSRGAN) technique. Entrance surface doses (ESD) measured were collected by changing exposure conditions. In the identical exposures, abdominal images were acquired and were processed with the BSRGAN. The images reconstructed by the BSRGAN were compared to a reference image with 80 kVp and 320 mA, which was evaluated by mean squared error (MSE), peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and structural similarity index measure (SSIM). In addition, signal profile analysis was employed to validate the effect of the images reconstructed by the BSRGAN. The exposure conditions with the lowest MSE (about 0.285) were shown in 90 kVp, 125 mA and 100 kVp, 100 mA, which decreased the ESD in about 52 to 53% reduction), exhibiting PSNR = 37.694 and SSIM = 0.999. The signal intensity variations in the optimized conditions rather decreased than that of the reference image. This means that the optimized exposure conditions would obtain reasonable image quality with a substantial decrease of the radiation dose, indicating it could sufficiently reflect the concept of As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) as the principle of radiation protection.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.245-253
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• 2011

The hazard level will be increased with the augmentation of the dose received by patients. Therefore, patients radiation dose have been analyzed by this study for the radiology clinics located at Seoul and Gyeongin area from August 2009 to September 2010. In the case of the front and rear directional inspection of skull, patient radiation dose was turned out to be 1.75mGy for radiology clinic, 3.00mGy for UK, 3.00mGy for Japan, and 5.00mGy for Germany, therefore, radiology clinic was the lowest. In the case of lateral directional inspection of skull, patient radiation dose was turned out to be 1.49mGy for radiology clinic, 1.50mGy for 3rd medical institution, therefore, radiology clinic was measured lower, and it was lower than 3.00mGy which is the recommended dose of IAEA. In order to reduce medical exposure of patient, optimization of efficient protection of radiation and reduction of medical radiation exposure are thought to be required by observing recommendation of international organization based on the result of this study.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.14-20
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• 2014

A lot of radiation exposure for radiation workers who are engaged in Nuclear Power Plants, especially PWRs, have been caused during the outage by CRUD, such as $^{58}Co$, $^{60}Co$, in Reactor Coolant System. And therefore we need to know source terms to achieve optimization of protection for the radiation workers from radiation exposure at Nuclear Power Plants efficiently. This study analyzed source terms at domestic NPPs (PWRs) nearby Steam Generator with CZT semiconductor detector using by IN-VIVO method during the outage for the first time in the country. We checked difference for the detected source terms between old and new NPP. It was performed especially to see a change of source terms by water chemistry process as well. There was not any difference by water chemistry process both NPPs. The main source terms are $^{58}Co$ and $^{60}Co$ at all NPPs. $^{59}Fe$ only appears in the new NPP. $^{137}Cs$ and $^{95}Zr$ are shown in the old NPP. The fraction of $^{58}Co/^{60}Co$ in the new NPP is higher than the old NPP for increasing the specific activity of $^{60}Co$.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.185-196
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• 2005

Although medical exposure from diagnostic radiology procedures such as conventional x-rays, CT and PET scans is necessary for healthcare purposes, understanding its characteristics and size of the resulting radiation dose to patients is much of worth because medical radiation constitutes the largest artificial source of exposure and the medical exposure is in a trend of fast increasing particularly in the developed society. Annual collective doses and per-caput effective doses from different radiology procedures in Korea were estimated by combining the effective dose estimates per single medical procedure and the health insurance statistics in 2002. Values of the effective dose per single procedure were compiled from different sources including NRPB reports, ICRP 80, MIRDOSE3.1 code and independent computations of the authors. The annual collective dose reaches 27440 man-Sv (diagnostic radiology: 22880 man-Sv, nuclear medicine: 4560 man-Sv) which is reduced to the annual per-caput effective dose of 0.58 mSv by dividing by the national population of 47.7 millions. The collective dose is far larger than that of occupational exposures, in the country operated 16 nuclear power plants in 2002, which is no more than 70 man-Sv in the same year. It is particularly noted that the collective dose due to CT scans amounts 9960 man-Sv. These results implies that the national policy for radiation protection should pay much more attention to optimization of patient doses in medicine.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.1777-1783
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• 2014

In this paper, we designed and fabricated a high-speed semiconductor sensor for use in power control devices and analyzed the characteristics with pulsed radiation tests. At first, radiation sensitive circular Si PIN diodes with various diameters(0.1 mm ~5.0 mm) were designed and fabricated using Si epitaxial wafer, which has a $42{\mu}m$ thick intrinsic layer. The reverse leakage current of the diode with a radius of 2 mm at a reverse bias of 30 V was about 20.4 nA. To investigate the characteristic responses of the developed diodes, the pulsed gamma-radiation tests were performed with the intensity of 4.88E8 rad(Si)/sec. From the test results showing that the output currents and the rising speeds have a linear relationship with the area of the sensors, we decided that the optimal condition took place at a 2 mm diameter. Next, for the selected 2 mm diodes, dose rate tests with a range of 2.47E8 rad(Si)/sec to 6.21E8 rad(Si)/sec were performed. From the results, which showed linear characteristics with the radiation intensity, a large amount of photocurrent over 60mA, and a high speed response under 350ns without saturation, we can conclude that the our developed PIN diode can be a good candidate for the sensor of power control devices.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.17-25
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• 2005

Since the safety of nuclear power plant has been becoming a big social issue the exposure dose of radiation for workers has been one of the important factors concerning the safety problem. The existing calculation methods of radiation dose used in the planning of radiation work assume that dose rate does not depend on the location within a work space thus the variation of exposure dose by different work path is not considered. In this study, a modified numerical method was presented to estimate the exposure dose during radiation work in radwaste storage considering the effects of the distance between a worker and sources. And a new numerical algorithm was suggested to search the optimal work path minimizing the exposure dose in pre-defined work space with given radiation sources. Finally, a virtual work simulation program was developed to visualize the exposure dose of radiation doting radiation works in radwaste storage and provide the capability of simulation for work planning. As a numerical example, a test radiation work was simulated under given space and two radiation sources, and the suggested optimal work path was compared with three predefined work paths. The optimal work path obtained in the study could reduce the exposure dose for the given test work. Based on the results, tile developed numerical method and simulation program could be useful tools in the planning of radiation work.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.355-359
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• 2021

In this study, the purpose of this study was to analyze the degree of exposure of radiation workers assigned to the Department of Radiology and frequent visitors during on-campus practice, and to conduct a basic study on the feasibility and optimization of the radiation protection of the Nuclear Safety Act for the Department of Radiology. . The average exposure dose of occupational workers by year was 0.01 mSv, the lowest in 2014 and 2016. The highest figure was 0.12 mSv in 2018. The average exposure dose of frequent visitors by year was the lowest at 0.013 mSv in 2018, and the highest at 0.022 mSv in 2016. According to this study, the annual exposure dose received by professors, practical assistants, and students in the department of radiology (department) who use only radiation generators in the course of in-school practice is less than 1 mSv, which is the dose limit for the general public. Therefore, at the time when the radiation dose of students in the Department of Radiology is lower than the dose limit of the general public, the current safety regulation of the Nuclear Safety law is judged to be excessive regulation. Therefore, it is considered necessary to revise the regulations for radiation generators in the current Nuclear Safety law or to revise the radiation safety management system for university students.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.281-290
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• 2012

The difference of radiation dose of MDCT due to different protocols between hospitals was analyzed by CTDI, DLP, the number of Slice and the number of DLP/Slice in 30 cases of the head, the abdomen and the chest that have 10 cases each from MDCT examination of the department of diagnostic imaging of three general hospitals in Gyeongsangbuk-do. The difference of image quality, CTDI, DLP, radiation dose in the eye and radiation dose in thyroid was analyzed after both helical scan and normal scan for head CT were performed because a protocol of head CT is relatively simple and head CT is the most frequent case. Head CT was significantly higher in two-thirds of hospitals compared to A hospital that does not exceed a CTDI diagnostic reference level (IAEA 50mGy, Korea 60mGy) (p<0.001). DLP was higher in one-third of hospitals than a diagnostic reference level of IAEA 1,050mGy.cm and Korea 1,000mGy.cm and two-thirds exceeded the recommendation of Korea and those were significantly higher than A hospital that does not exceed a diagnostic reference level (p<0.001). Abdomen CT showed 119mGy that was higher than a diagnostic reference level of IAEA 25mGy and Korea 20mGy in one-third. DLP in all hospitals was higher that Korea recommendation of 700mGy.cm. Among target hospitals, C hospital showed high radiation dose in all tests because MPR and 3D were of great importance due to low pitch and high Tube Curren. To analyze the difference of radiation dose by scan methods, normal scan and helical scan for head CT of the same patient were performed. In the result, CTDI and DLP of helical CT were higher 63.4% and 93.7% than normal scan (p<0.05, p<0.01). However, normal scan of radiation dose in thyroid was higher 87.26% (p<0.01). Beam of helical CT looked like a bell in the deep part and the marginal part so thyroid was exposed with low radiation dose deviated from central beam. In addition, helical scan used Gantry angle perpendicularly and normal scan used it parallel to the orbitomeatal line. Therefore, radiation dose in thyroid decreased in helical scan. However, a protocol in this study showed higher radiation dose than diagnostic reference level of KFDA. To obey the recommendation of KFDA, low Tube Curren and high pitch were demanded. In this study, the difference of image quality between normal scan and helical scan was not significant. Therefore, a standardized protocol of normal scan was generally used and protective gear for thyroid was needed except a special case. We studied a part of CT cases in the local area. Therefore, the result could not represent the entire cases. However, we confirmed that patient's radiation dose in some cases exceeded the recommendation and the deviation between hospitals was observed. To improve this issue, doctors of diagnostic imaging or technologists of radiology should perform CT by the optimized protocol to decrease a level of CT radiation and also reveal radiation dose for the right to know of patients. However, they had little understanding of the situation. Therefore, the effort of relevant agencies with education program for CT radiation dose, release of radiation dose from CT examination and addition of radiation dose control and open CT contents into evaluation for hospital services and certification, and also the effort of health professionals with the best protocol to realize optimized CT examination.